JF-17 Thunder Multirole Fighter [Thread 1]

[fatman17]

SO THIS ARTICLE IS FOR 23rd March and shehbazi2001.

How should we start
AGEING AIRCRAFTS AND NAGGING WIVES

Sir MuradK, wonderful piece.

 

[Muradk]

MuradK saheb.
A question about oldaircrafts and their lmaintenance. Why is it thatF16 s dont corrode whereas Mirages corrode. Secondly I gather hairline cracks are a persistent problem. I read somewhere that people use ??Laser to diagnose hairline fractures. Is it true and what means does PAF use. Obviously, if I have asked something that you dont want to talk about on a public forum please let me know.
WaSalam
Araz

We use 3 methods For all fighters, There are 3 ways the engg use Commercial UV fluorescent leak detection devices for inside the engine
2nd Halogen light and Ultraviolet light
3rd is Lazer detection. Ultraviolet light shows you small crack in the turbine, But again the new tech's like Lazer can detect the smallest hairline Fracture.

 

[araz]

We use 3 methods For all fighters, There are 3 ways the engg use Commercial UV fluorescent leak detection devices for inside the engine
2nd Halogen light and Ultraviolet light
3rd is Lazer detection. Ultraviolet light shows you small crack in the turbine, But again the new tech's like Lazer can detect the smallest hairline Fracture.

Thank you for your response.
Araz

 

[BATMAN]

SO THIS ARTICLE IS FOR 23rd March and shehbazi2001.

How should we start
AGEING AIRCRAFTS AND NAGGING WIVES

Ageing aircraft like ageing spouses, Become more amd more nagging as they age. Having said that, may I explain.
Being an Air Force with limited resources PAF has a record of pushing the limits on aircrafts life. Likewise, we do not retire our tools untill they beg for mercy killing, Whereas we should have respectfully buried those years before with full honours, and brought new ones in their place. It may be the nostalgia of keeping my favourite screwdriver untill the philips end changes to a chisel, or it could be my ingrained fear that parting with my lucky screwdriver would bring bad luck, or could it be the psyche at the back of our technicians' mind that each screwdriver coasts a lot- that too in dollors. whatever the reason may be, we like our equipment to outlive us.

Comming back to nagging part, every day I see the Tweety Bird ( T-37)
serving PAF's traning flying like a speechless mule that has a mission in life. But it still does not nag - not loudly at least. Deep inside its heart, it also yearns for a retirement, giving that the first T-37 flew in 1955. It is hard to imagine how many pentagenarians are ready to have 2 adults ride on their shoulders and still try to land softly on touchdown after a high jump. A hard landing the Tweety takes in a stride and nag the Tweety does, albeit politely.
AirCraft is a complicated machine. it has a wide varity of components, ranging from metallic panels, to rubber hoses, to thin wires, to high quality HUD glasses and complicated avionics. The variety is bewildering. Reliability and maintainability of all this jumbles varies just as much, some components require huge test rigs to calibrate, while others are hardwired using lasers. Some have lives just a fraction of the aircraft life, and some never get off the aircraft, ever.
With such an amalgam of componemts, it is but natural that as the aircraft ages, its maintenance workload increases. Parts that get old start to leak: Some develop cracks that were never anticipated. No aircraft is designed to operate 50 years, and yet we make it to. But with the decision to fly the aircraft for so long, we must weign the accompanying increase in risk, workloadin its upkeep and operating cost. Statistically the flight safety risks, maintenance workload and the cost of spares, all increase with the age of the aircraft. Obsolescence also adds to the cost of spares as they become uneconomical for the manufacture old technology components. Late upgrades to pre-empt failure coast more on ageing aircraft.
nevertheless, the decreasing MTBF ( Mean Time Between Failure) is not uniform across the components over a long life. There are components such as tyres and drag chutes that are designed for a limited number of sorties, and there are aircraft panels that are designed to last thousands of hours. Life expired aircraft pitched in park and in rounabouts even road side in Lower topa and my sabe has a pole stuck up its *** in the front off Peshawar Mucipal building and these are testimony to extremely strong materials in construction of their basic structure, skin and panels.
On top of all this therer are unplanned factors such as FOD, accidents, excessive aircraft stresses, weather phenomena, etc. The bolt from the sky , the birds in the sky, or the nut and bolt on the ground that just come out of nowhere , causes the maintance crew an additional headache, for no fault of theirs. but agian the bolt on the ground is someone's fault. A technician thinking about flood water entering his village in Mardan or thinking how to convince his wife so he can get laid because she is pissed at him that there is no money left for her to buy a dress or something and the tec will forget his tools in, of all the places , the engine intake. These issues cannot form a major part of the design philosophy or maintenance of an aircraft part.
And that, preciely brings in a serious dilemma faced by today's maintenance engineers. As long as the aircraft are new they perform like the ferrari that comes with a 50,000km unconditional warranty. But on the ageing aircraft the warranty is long forgotton promise. the big question for the aircraft is how to predict and avoid failure of a component without losing an important part of its life? It is easy to remove a component and put it in a repair cycle, or altogather reject it, thinking that it might fail in a couple of weeks. But how to make that judgment without knowing the complete effects of that decision? The manufacture gives a certain life to an aircraft based on certain operating conditions. The design engineer does not know how is he going to operate the aircraft while it flies in Risalpure, Samungli or the corrosive Masoor. Thankfully the taxpayers who are not so many in Pakistan have faith in PAF not to throw away their hard eanrned money. But with his luxury comes the enormous burden of ensuring its best utilization and balancing cost of maintenance against life of a pilot.
With such Varience between the design and operating conditions of ageing aircrafts, arises the silent whimpers of the ageing aircraft, Which show a little material failures that never happened before. Every new crack, every new leakis saying that the aircraft needs more than regular care. It needs meticulous inspections like never before. It needs that second look just in case you missed the silent tears from the sobing fuel hose, or th ebleeding from the hydraulic fluid connection in your first glance.
And the most important aspect is that we dont have that kind of cash that we can simply say retire these and by 50 new ones , with all the sanctions placed on us, We should be proud of our PAF that it has done so well that it has the reputation of being one of the best. we only talk about the pilots ans thats it but we forget that the men who work on them are the real heros.
So next time you pass by an aircraft past its prime years, eye it closely to look for signs of ageing, Which will not show easily, but still would be there to warn you of the impending catasrophe.
Nagging is not something you should miss out or brush off as trivial. And you could relicate it in your life, with your wife , when your better half is past 40- if you wish to live long.

Surely this piece is an extract from book.

 

[Muradk]

Do you know which one and who wrote it.? I have written 79 Articles for PAF and forwarded to the appropriate officers.

Oh I remember In 1980 PAF gave all Engg Universities , Complete sabers with engines and than we gave then F-6s . Peshawar university was given 2 saber fully intact, a few years later the PAF historian found out that the engines are in side the building in a lab but no saber. The Chairman said that we sold them in the market they made , pots , pans and lotass out of it. PAF took away the engines I think that way the right thing to do , we give you guys our plane a plane which saved your butt in 65 and 71 and you guys sell it as pot and pans and lotass , someone is right now washing his *** with it right now. People of our nation forget things very soon.

 

[EagleEyes]

People of our nation forget things very soon.

Not all sir, not all of them.

 

[Interceptor]

Do you know which one and who wrote it.? I have written 79 Articles for PAF and forwarded to the appropriate officers.

Oh I remember In 1980 PAF gave all Engg Universities , Complete sabers with engines and than we gave then F-6s . Peshawar university was given 2 saber fully intact, a few years later the PAF historian found out that the engines are in side the building in a lab but no saber. The Chairman said that we sold them in the market they made , pots , pans and lotass out of it. PAF took away the engines I think that way the right thing to do , we give you guys our plane a plane which saved your butt in 65 and 71 and you guys sell it as pot and pans and lotass , someone is right now washing his *** with it right now. People of our nation forget things very soon.

The PAF sold the Sabre's to Hollywood for a good profit, cant see why it has any significant importance other than that they were used during Pakistani conflicts. I am sure the UNI's have better examples that are more approachable to students to understand, if it were all about having a live example than most UNI's would provide, Cambridge has quite a high standard in engineering studies, but they make students understand by allowing them to draw concepts with the use of the latest equipment available.

 

[shehbazi2001]

Do you know which one and who wrote it.? I have written 79 Articles for PAF and forwarded to the appropriate officers.

Oh I remember In 1980 PAF gave all Engg Universities , Complete sabers with engines and than we gave then F-6s . Peshawar university was given 2 saber fully intact, a few years later the PAF historian found out that the engines are in side the building in a lab but no saber. The Chairman said that we sold them in the market they made , pots , pans and lotass out of it. PAF took away the engines I think that way the right thing to do , we give you guys our plane a plane which saved your butt in 65 and 71 and you guys sell it as pot and pans and lotass , someone is right now washing his *** with it right now. People of our nation forget things very soon.

I have contacted the chairman of the Engg Univ and he is very angry at this allegation. In his words, "UET is not so stupid to do this".


MOD EDIT: unnecessary...

 

[shehbazi2001]

23, Please watch your language. Be polite. I have contacted not one, but two senior Professors. In fact they were even angry at me that a common sense would tell that its not possible for UET to make lotas out of aircraft. Its simply a baseless allegation.
Do you know what machinery is required to make lotas out of aircraft? and u expect UET to have all that machinery?

 

[Skywalker]

Do you know which one and who wrote it.? I have written 79 Articles for PAF and forwarded to the appropriate officers.

Oh I remember In 1980 PAF gave all Engg Universities , Complete sabers with engines and than we gave then F-6s . Peshawar university was given 2 saber fully intact, a few years later the PAF historian found out that the engines are in side the building in a lab but no saber. The Chairman said that we sold them in the market they made , pots , pans and lotass out of it. PAF took away the engines I think that way the right thing to do , we give you guys our plane a plane which saved your butt in 65 and 71 and you guys sell it as pot and pans and lotass , someone is right now washing his *** with it right now. People of our nation forget things very soon.

Murad sb,

By looking at your credibility it looks very much true to me....and belive you me or not...I am confused wether I should laugh or start crying. in general our universities are not bad but unfortunately so far we have not seen anything credible for the country from these universities in terms of research. We basically talk a lot but in practical we are not even 10% of it.

 

[shehbazi2001]

SkyWalker what do you think, where from all engineers for your missile, space, avionics, and UAV programmes come from????? They dont drop from the sky, they are produced by UETs.

Go ask Pakistan Navy, who fixed the problem with their french torpedoes???? Pak Navy can do repair and maintenance..........but they could not identify an inherent problem in the design.........a deliberate design trick to force PN to send torpedoes back to France for repair every time......

It was a fresh graduate of UET Peshawar who identified the design fault and made new specs for the torpedo and thus the torpedoes were re-deployed after spending years in maintenance depot.

 

[shehbazi2001]

Murad sahib you mentioned of your Sabre in front of Municipal Building Peshawar. Yes it was there till almost 2002. Then I remember that two Sabres disappeared from Peshawar, including this one.

One Sabre was there in Engineering University Peshawar and other was near Municipal Building. I dont remember exactly, but both of these disappeared almost in 2004-2005. I think its the same PAF Museum story. The jet engine (of Attacker I think) was also removed from Engineering University Peshawar.

While the Municipal Sabre's removal may be ok, I did not like the act of removal of Sabre from Engineering University Peshawar. As a student of Engineering, it was an inspiration for me to understand the aircrafts and I used to watch it closely from time to time. There are many Sabres on the useless locations, acting as show pieces. They can be removed but the Sabre of Engineering University was not a show piece, it was a machine to understand.

Based on new information, I must clarify that the Sabre of UET Peshawar had to be removed due to the construction of a new building on that spot and the Sabre in front of Municipal builiding Peshawar was removed "perhaps" due to the construction of a Girls College there. Therefore its good to know that PAF had nothing to do with these removals. I dont know whether these Sabres were returned to PAF or not. The jet engine of Attacker was taken back for the PAF Museum, as I mentioned before.
Therefore this topic should end here and we can now go back to JF-17 on this thread.

 

[shehbazi2001]

Fly-by-Wire for JF-17

Not having the courage to go back 80 pages, I am asking directly about the Fly by Wire and autopilots for JF-17. Either chinese/pakistani Fly-by-wire shall be installed or JF-17 shall be without Fly-by-Wire and Autopilots or western systems shall be procured????

 

[HAIDER]

a deliberate design trick to force PN to send torpedoes back to France for repair every time......

Very common practice, exact same story told by PAF radar unit officer. About sending few radar equipment back to US. But later technician figure out its just very minor repair and paying hell lot of money.

 

[araz]

SkyWalker what do you think, where from all engineers for your missile, space, avionics, and UAV programmes come from????? They dont drop from the sky, they are produced by UETs.

Go ask Pakistan Navy, who fixed the problem with their french torpedoes???? Pak Navy can do repair and maintenance..........but they could not identify an inherent problem in the design.........a deliberate design trick to force PN to send torpedoes back to France for repair every time......

It was a fresh graduate of UET Peshawar who identified the design fault and made new specs for the torpedo and thus the torpedoes were re-deployed after spending years in maintenance depot.

Shehbazi.
I fully agree with you. Pakistani institutes are full of very ingenious people who given half a chance and some research money can set the world alight. it is the lack of money, and corruption which holds these people back and they eventually loose heart andd go and work abroad, for good money , but still sad in their hearts!!
I remember a friend of mine who was a PHD in aeronotical engineering was invited for an interview at a VERY prestigious institute in pakistan. Although he did not accept the offer they made for various reasons, he advised them on getting some off the shelf computing programmes to further their aims . On a good note a very bright young man with a PHD in computers from UK has just joined an educational institution in Islamabad. He brings with him very sought after skills, and is so happy in pakistan that he refuses to return.
waSalam
Araz